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At the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo,

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the game development company Ubisoft

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debuted a trailer showcasing the cooperative mode

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in their upcoming game Assassin’s Creed Unity.

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One thing viewers quickly noticed

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about the trailer was that all the assassins in it were male.

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When questioned about why female characters

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weren’t an option in this mode,

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the game’s creative director said that

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although there were originally plans to allow for female assassins,

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the development team couldn’t add them

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because it would require “double the animations,

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double the voices, and double the visual assets.”

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Meanwhile, a level designer on the game

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stated that including female assassins would have meant

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recreating 8000 animations on a new skeleton.

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These comments led to an explosion of controversy

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and criticism on Twitter, with many people using

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the sarcastic hashtag “women are too hard to animate.”

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A number of experienced game developers

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joined the chorus of voices

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calling out the absurdity of Ubisoft’s claims.

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Animator Jonathan Cooper,

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who had previously worked on Assassin’s Creed III

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for Ubisoft, tweeted,

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“I would estimate this to be a day or two’s work.

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Not a replacement of 8000 animations.”

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And Manveer Heir of Bioware summed up

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what Ubisoft was actually saying:

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“We don’t really care to put the effort in to make a woman assassin.”

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Ubisoft’s disregard for female character options

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didn’t stop with Unity.

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Also at E3 2014, the director of Far Cry 4

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admitted to a similar issue with that game’s online co-op mode,

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saying, “We were inches away from having you be able

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to select a girl or a guy as your co-op buddy.”

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Again, the excuse for why this option wasn’t available

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was that it would just be too much work.

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And yet again, what they were really saying

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was that they just couldn’t be bothered to do the work

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it would have taken to provide that option.

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Though it’s worth pointing out that in the two years

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since this controversy, Ubisoft has made clear efforts

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to improve the representation of women

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in the core Assassin’s Creed games,

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with the most recent entry, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate,

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giving the option to play as Evie Frye

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through much of the campaign.

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Of course, Ubisoft weren’t and aren’t the only ones

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with this apathetic attitude toward female inclusion.

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In fact, not doing the necessary work to include women

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has long been the norm in the video game industry.

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The FIFA soccer game series, which had its first entry

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in 1993, took over 20 years

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before finally introducing female teams in FIFA 16.

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“I’m in the game.”

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And it took ten years for Call of Duty to introduce

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female soldiers into its competitive multiplayer

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with 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts.

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The long-running Battlefield franchise,

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on the other hand, has still never allowed

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for playable female characters in its multiplayer modes.

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There’s an important conversation to be had

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about the ways in which military shooters

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work to glorify violence,

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but as long as we’re going to have such games,

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it’s actually better when they include female combatants in them.

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Now you might be asking yourself,

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“Doesn’t having female enemies in a game

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perpetuate violence against women?”

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And that’s a good, fair question.

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When we refer to depictions

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of violence against women,

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we’re generally discussing situations in which

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women are being attacked or victimized

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specifically because they are women,

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reinforcing a perception of women as victims.

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Such scenarios are very different from those in which

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women are presented as active participants.

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In the Street Fighter games, for instance,

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when Chun-Li and Ryu fight each other,

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this isn’t considered violence against women,

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because the two characters are presented as being on

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more or less equal footing,

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and because Chun-Li is an active participant

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who isn’t being targeted or attacked

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specifically because she’s a woman.

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Similarly, the waves of male attackers players face

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in so many games are typically not passive victims.

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They are active participants in the conflict,

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and importantly, the violence against them isn’t gendered.

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Players fight with them because they’re on the opposing side,

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not specifically because they are men.[br][br]

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Unfortunately, when female combatants do appear in games,

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they are often presented in sexualized ways

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which inevitably lend the player’s attacks

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an air of gendered violence.

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In Saints Row The Third’s so-called

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“Whored Mode,” for instance,

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players must defeat waves of sexualized women,

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sometimes beating them to death

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with a large purple dildo.

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In the 2009 game Wolfenstein,

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the Elite Guard are a special all-female enemy unit

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whose absurd uniforms sexualize not only

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the female characters themselves

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but also player’s acts of violence against them.

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Similarly, in 2012’s Hitman Absolution,

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the Saints are a special unit of female assassins

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who wear latex fetish gear underneath nun’s habits.

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It’s a ludicrous design choice that is

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transparently intended to sexualize these enemies.

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And in Metal Gear Solid 4,

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the Beauty & the Beast unit is an enemy group

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made up of five female soldiers

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that players fight over the course of the game.

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At a certain point during these encounters,

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each boss sheds her armor and appears

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as a woman in form-fitting attire.

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“It’s all so funny.”

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If players then avoid the Beauty’s deadly embrace

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for several minutes without killing or neutralizing her,

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the game transports them to a white room

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where equipping the camera results

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in the character making sultry poses.

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Funny how that doesn’t happen

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with the male bosses in the game.

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Whenever female combatants are dressed

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in sexualizing attire, it sets them noticeably apart

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from other enemy units.

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It’s intended to make the player’s

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encounters with them sexually titillating

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and that’s particularly troubling considering

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that those encounters often involve fighting

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and killing those characters.

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Violence against female characters

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should never be presented as “sexy”.

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The way for games to handle female combatants

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is not to present them as sexualized treats

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for the player.

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Rather, it’s to present them simply as combatants

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who happen to be women fighting alongside

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their male counterparts on equal footing.

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For all of its many, many problems

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one thing Bioshock Infinite did right was to include

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non-sexualized female officers on Columbia’s police force.

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And in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate,

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both the player’s gang and the enemy gang

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have rank-and-file female members

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who fight alongside the men.

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Despite the presence of female combatants

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in games like these, there is still a tendency

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for game studios to treat female representation

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as some kind of extravagant goal,

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rather than simply treating it as standard

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in the same way they handle male representation.

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The excuse that I hear most often for the absence

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of female combatants in games is that players wouldn’t believe it.

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But games, even ones that draw on historical locations

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or events like the Assassin’s Creed series,

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create their own worlds and set the tone

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for what we will or won’t believe.

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To participate in the worlds games create,

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we happily accept time travel, superpowers,

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ancient alien civilizations,

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the ability to carry infinite items,

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the idea that eating a hot dog can instantly

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heal your wounds, and a million other fictions.

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It’s certainly not too much to ask that these

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fictional worlds give us believable female combatants too.

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The media we engage with has a powerful impact

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on our ideas of what’s believable and what’s not.

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Games like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

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demonstrate that when the existence of female combatants

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is presented as straightforward, normal and believable,

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players have no problem believing it.

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And they shouldn’t, since,

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unlike those magical healing hot dogs I mentioned,

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female combatants actually exist.